


Spare Parts

by AbigailHT



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: (I will update the tags as I go :)), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Androids, Desus Spring Sci-Fi Challenge 2018, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Language, Pre-Slash, Robots, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-14 21:42:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14777747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbigailHT/pseuds/AbigailHT
Summary: The world of darkness surrounds Daryl after his previous master throws him away. What will happen when he finds the light again?





	1. Darkness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [desushoard (tenderanglerfish)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenderanglerfish/gifts).



> This is actually based on a prompt I got from the lovely desushoard for the Sci-Fi challenge :))

It‘s dark.

It’s always dark.

He can’t move.

When had he moved the last time?

But he can feel.

Pain.

There is so much pain.

Oh how he wished he couldn’t feel.

 —

Forty-seven floors until he reaches the sunlight.

Paul Rovia is leaning against the bars of the elevator that prevent him from falling down into the dark and endless pit of the building he lives in. When he reaches the ground floor and steps out of the building, he can’t help but blink a few times until his eyes get adjusted to the bright sunlight.

He wonders what it must feel like to have windows.

To live up so high you could maybe even see the sea.

He doesn’t know if that’s possible from the skyscrapers in Washington, but that’s only because he’s never been up there before.

Up where the upper class lives with their flying cars and bikes.

Rarely feeling the need to descend to the ground where the simple citizens live.

Oh but he knows they will descend if they think it might be worthwhile.

Paul wasn’t one to brag, but he had managed to make a few of them come down a few times now if they loved his work so much that they came in person instead of sending an android or a servant. Basically to meet at the middle ground with him, because they know he doesn’t have the license to go up.

Many of them know he’s the best with antiquities, especially older technology that the fancy engineers know nothing about anymore.

Toasters, cars, bikes, old gaming devices? Who needs them now except for the rich and bored who hold onto old pieces of their families for sentimental reasons and just because they can?

They love to throw out their money whenever they can, just to demonstrate how wealthy they are.

Stuff that is actually trash and useless is his specialty and gold mine.

Trash that he knows how to repair and modify and update to their wishes so he can afford to stay at the forty-seventh floor underneath the surface.

And Paul knows well there are ninety-three more floors down that he could sink.

He knows damn well how it was at floor sixty-eight.

He knows, because he grew up there. A time he chooses not to think a lot about anymore. A different building, yes, but they all were the same anyway.

He shoves the memories away and walks across the busy street to wait for the bus that will take him to the junitard.

—

There it is.

A movement.

Another movement.

Pieces around him shift.

The sensation of being lifted.

Air.

Is that light?

And then he falls.

Pain.

Pain is everywhere.

—

When he reaches the junkyard, he spends the first two hours searching for spare parts he could maybe use to fix something up.

One box.

Two boxes.

He’s filling them up with anything useful his hands can find.

Today is a good day and his haul is bigger than he could have imagined.

Paul hopes that fixing up Jadis’ arm will still be enough for her to lend him her transporter again, otherwise he doesn’t know how he’ll carry all this stuff home with him.

He met Jadis five years ago when he’d started to repair things for people in exchange for food or goods he needed. She owns the junkyard and usually won’t let outsiders just roam and take whatever they want. But she’s been making an exception for Paul since he repaired her cyborg-arm, and upgraded it so she could lift heavy objects more easily now.

“I like your art,” she said one time when he’d gifted her a small robot mouse he’d built from scratch so her cat could play with it.

Paul knows how to make the woman happy by now, and whenever he can, he makes little presents for her as a thank you for providing him all the pieces he needs to earn his living for free. After all, he doesn’t know how long she will grant him entrance and let him take whatever he needs, so he will do anything he can to keep her happy.

When he reaches a part of the junkyard he hasn’t searched a lot before, he sees a big pile of trash catching his interest. Maybe he could ask Jadis to dig in there to see what he can find.

—

Voices.

He hasn’t heard voices in a long time.

He doesn’t know what’s happening, but he’s seeing the light.

—

“There, can find stuff now. I will go eat. Just go when you finish,” the blond haired woman with the straight short haircut tells Paul after hopping down from the mechanical digger.

“Can I—“

“Keys to transporter in my office. Just take. See soon.”

“Thanks,” Jesus shouts after the woman with a smile.

He hasn’t seen her interact with anyone else the past five years, maybe that’s why her grammar is so strange. Although he doesn’t really know how her life is like outside the trash yard. But that’s not what he’s here for. He’s here to find new things that could buy him his way up the floors.

—

Should he make a sound?

But he can’t make a sound.

What if they came to finally wreck him?

What if his time has come.

He wishes his former master had turned him off.

But that would have been an act of compassion.

Humans don’t care about machines after all.

—

Paul has to blink again.

This time it isn’t the brightness of the sun.  
After digging in the new pile for an hour, he trips over a leg.

Yes, over a fucking leg.

Of course he knows what he’s seeing and his heart rate picks up.

It doesn’t happen every day that you find an Android.

Well, at least what’s left of it.


	2. What Are You?

* * *

Paul had fixed up enough androids to know that the one he’s looking at isn’t an ordinary one.

The android has lost one eye, but is looking at Paul with the perfectly intact one, startling him because it’s blue and looks real and human. Androids don’t usually have blue eyes, especially not detailed irises to look real as this one.

Not just that — everything about this android looks eerily human. Paul has never seen material that resembles human skin so much, but it’s obvious the thing isn’t human, and he doesn’t think it’s a cyborg either.

He can see mechanical parts through the eye socket that are typically used for androids, but also other parts he hasn’t seen before and therefore can’t categorize. But it’s definitely not bionic technology he is looking at. And also, there’s no blood anywhere, so that’s that.

The first thing he wants to do is to shut it off to save power. It couldn’t have been in the junkyard for long if it hadn’t run out of power yet — or that is what he thought at first, before he failed to find the off-switch.

Despite being eighty percent sure, he _really_ hopes he hasn’t found a human slash cyborg, because _that_ would be some other level of fucked up shit he sure as hell doesn’t want to get himself involved in. So he prays it’s not a crime scene he found.

“Hi,” he says because the silent staring at each other is starting to get awkward, and when he doesn’t get a response, he adds, “I’m Paul, what’s your item number?”

What he gets as an answer is a glare that turns the already awkward situation even more uncomfortable.

“Can you talk? Or…”

For the first time since he’s found it, the android blinks, no, it closes its eye.

“Right… you also don’t seem to be able to move much, let me see what I can do about that…” he muses and steps closer to pull the android a little upwards to sneak his arms underneath its armpits and around its chest so he can drag it backwards with him.

It doesn’t complain, nor does it open its eyes again, but Paul does notice that it clenches its eyes and presses its lips hard together.

Weird.

Everything about it _is_ weird.

He still thinks that when he sits at his work table later, the android lying in front of him, intact and damaged limbs sprawled on the table, no noise, no words, no movement. Eye still shut, but Paul knows it’s still awake.

“How am I going to work on you if I can’t shut you off?” he asks, more himself than the android. “Oh, maybe…”

Sometimes, switches can be beneath the wig if there is hair. He tries to peel the wig off, but it doesn’t work. It even pulls at the skin and stretches it, and he notices that the android clenches its eye again.

As if…

As if its feeling what he’s doing. But that’s absurd.

Paul scowls when he can’t take the hair off and undresses the machine completely.

No switch.

Only ripped artificial skin with cables and other stuff coming out, a totally fucked up left arm and right leg, minor damages on the other limbs and the eye socket that looks as if someone has ripped its eyeball out.

But no switch.

Also no plugs.

No interfaces to connect devices.

Nothing.

“What are you?” he finally asks.

No answer.

This, of course, is also untypical for androids like anything else about this particular one. They’re usually programmed to obey humans, to answer when asked, never tell lies, to serve.

“Whoever programmed you did a lousy job on the politeness part,” he says and gets up to rummage in the boxes he’s brought into his apartment.

He finds what he’s looking for — an old gamepad for a video game console.

Not many use these things anymore. Nowadays people have video gaming cubes in which they can walk around freely and control everything over hand and body movements — or, if they are wealthy enough, via a chip in their brain and mind control.

There are, though, some people, especially those who can’t afford a gaming cube in their homes, who still appreciate these old things.

Paul has never understood the appeal of sitting around and playing a virtual game himself, he started working for money at a very young age.

He had to.

There simply wasn’t time to waste on something like this that doesn’t pay his rent or his food or his clothes or his water or his electricity.

But he knows others have that time to waste, and he knows they love that so much that this piece of crap will be valuable for negotiation as soon as he repairs and upgrades it so it’s compatible with specific devices.

And he already knows who will be happy about receiving this one, so happy that he might even help him out with this android, or whatever it was.

Paul doesn’t like asking Eugene for his help. No — the guy is a goddamn cutthroat — but he needs electromagnetic gloves to be able to work on it without electrocuting himself if he can't turn it off, and he knows Eugene has spare ones since he's traded his own pair for something else he needed more urgently that time.

It’s not that Eugene needed more than one pair of gloves, but Paul didn’t have anything more valuable to offer back then. EM-gloves are fancy to have, especially for working on androids while they’re turned on, but it’s not a real necessity. Older gummy gloves probably would do the trick too, but they’re big and heavy and unpractical, and he needs to be able to handle tiny and complex pieces with precision. It’s not just an old toaster after all.

Paul pulls the android down from his table and stores it in a corner where it won’t get in the way for a while. He then sits down and starts working on the small device he intends on using for negotiation with Eugene.

This android project will probably take a lot of his time and resources, but he knows it will pay off, so he can’t stop the smile forming on his lips while he takes the gamepad apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally intended 3 chapters for this. But it turns out I might need more... oops? :D


End file.
